Rooney

Players doing well outside of Utd speaks for a toxic environment though. I think thats the big issue here. Plenty of good players have gone to Man Utd and been terrible. There is obviously something wrong with the culture as it cannot be a coincidence. Utd have bought poorly under every manager post Fergie! Moyes, Mourinho, Ten Haag, Ole all bought some stinkers. I totally agree the gap to CL football is not that big. 67-70 points should see teams there, which means you can afford to lose a fair amount of games, but that gap to the top is huge. Signing Cunha doesn’t win Man Utd the league.

That’s hardly right. We have good balance across the team but with areas we need to upgrade. MacAllister and Gravenberch have been superb this season, the latter way more effective in the first half as teams have worked out how he breaks through the lines but I expect Slot to work on that in the summer. Konate was also unbelievable until he got injured. We purposely didn’t sign anyone in the summer outside of opportunist signings. Richard Hughes leads our recruitment and most top clubs are sniffing around Kerkez and Hujsen who he signed. I’m interested to see what we do in the summer, we’ll 100% sign a striker to replace Nunez.

Our form tailing off of a myth. We’ve been largely consistent. Everyone remembers the Cup final and the Fulham game but our results are pretty much the same. I think our play has stopped being as creative but that’s the Trent issue. He’s the playmaker and notably our creativity has dropped off a fair amount. I don’t think we’re as exciting to watch, but this team could easily get 90 points which is huge really. But totally agree this team is not a patch on the one from 2019. That side was unbelievable. Fingers crossed we’re only 2-3 signings away from hitting those heights again!

Unbelievable season! I don’t even think we’ve been that good, but we could get more points than Arteta has ever got with Arsenal. Under Slot we’re an efficient machine. Excited to see what we do in the summer as clearly we have some weak links and a major creativity hole if/when Trent leaves. I worry about our build up play if we don’t sign a creative midfielder.

You’d rather be in Man Utd’s position than Liverpool’s 😂 oh come off it Liam. Who’s out aging team? Salah has been in the form of his life and Virgil would walk in to any team in Europe. Not sure I get that. This summer we will 100% be buying a left back and a striker. And if Trent goes, I suspect a number 10 and then possibly a utility defender. Like I say, I’ve heard Man Utd are back for the last 10 years and it’s hilarious to see them turn in to the very thing they used to rinse Liverpool fans for. Utd are at least 2-3 seasons from challenging for the title. And I’d be shocked if Amorim lasts that long too.

Loads of players do that though. He might well make it, but I can list you off hundreds of players who’ve been on a similar trajectory and then tailed off. To have a career as an elite premier league footballer you need way more than just natural ability.

Hardly. Do you know how many youth players do well at that level and don’t make it, least of all when you are constantly in your father’s shadows.

Have a feeling he ends up playing the same amount of games for Man Utd as all of us in this thread.

Make generator but like Dobbo says, you don’t want to have a poor showing in it! I think the new format means most clubs can do ok in it though and you can afford a tough draw. Anyway, classic Utd as I suspected. Back to reality. Real inconsistent team and on course for the worst league finish ever. There’s not even a summer war chest and even though suspect Rashford will bring in 50m, I think it will be a big summer for clubs not in the World Club Cup. Utd probably want a striker too but shopping in the mid tier bracket.

I think what Steve was trying to articulate is Man Utd are poorly run. Ten Haag should have been sacked in the summer, yet he wasn’t. Now you have Amorim who, I think the jury is out on, who is going to buy a load of players to suit 352. Yeah that’s fine but when Amorim leaves who’s going to be the next manager? Instead you’re left with a load of wing backs who can’t play full back and can’t be wide forwards.

Yeah that’s a bonkers dig 😂 Club legend who has effectively retired from managerial to a man who nobody had heard of 12 months ago who’s about to win the league. I’d say that’s called some exceptional succession planning from the higher beings at the club.

It was a good comeback. Similar to Liverpool vs Dortmund in 2016. I would hardly class it as one of the greatest European comebacks though. A good Man Utd comeback but certainly not one of the greatest of all time in Europe. And PTSD about what? No Liverpool fan even cares about the FA Cup game from last season. It’s just classic Man Utd post Fergie, the amount of times the corner gets turned then you crash it’s genuinely hilarious to all other football fans who grew up in the 90s and early 00s. Got spanked by Newcastle, will drop points to Wolves at the weekend but Utd are back. Like I say, will never stop being funny. More chance of Southampton delivering a Premier League title next season than Man Utd.

A return to the dizzy heights of 6th in the Premier League? Score in the last minute against a team with 10 men and suddenly Utd are back. I’ve seen this story SO many times and it never stops being funny.

It’s this attitude and why it will never not be funny at how terrible Man Utd currently are. Long may it continue.

It’s because you have something ideologically driven and people in charge of departments are under qualified and making decisions based on an ideology. The tariff thing is still bonkers, mad to think how quickly that’s been abandoned.

Quite. The tariff situation is just bonkers. Just reeks of people not understanding the global economy and how things work. Genuinely anyone with a basic understanding of economics could have seen what was going to happen. You can hate the system and want to be disruptive, but I think ultimately it weakens any negotiating hand.

Those World Cup 2010 games were pure torture. England vs Scotland in Euro 2020 was another one dour watch (I’m sure it was then). I’ve seen some truly terrible live games and on TV. Seen way too many that they all kind of blur in to one.

Funding got announced recently. The suns are huge, so it’s beneficial to the clubs from a financial aspect. Think it’s how teams performed in the CL over a 4-5 year basis it could be wrong for European clubs at least.

Starts mid June I think. Ending mid July. That will be one interesting thing to keep an eye on as not sure how teams will cope with having no pre season essentially, or is using August as pre season!

People voted to leave the EU because they had no idea what they were voting for. Yes it cost money to buy in to, but it was mutually beneficial as that's how trade works. The EU was absolutely terrible for business, again, I know this as I work for a business! All it did is increase raw materials cost and decrease efficiency along with meaning we are not a good country to invest in as there was so much turmoil & uncertainty going on. I can't speak for the industries you speak of, but they sound like casual work/zero contracts. There are some unethical practices there, but yeah that's capitalism for you. Certainly in most companies there are pay structures or flat pay rates which prevent an influx of cheap labour. Same principle applies when you're shopping though.. if you can buy the same product in Aldi for £10 vs £25 in Sainsburys what are you going to do? There are still a lot of manufacturing companies in the UK, but like the US, we took to invest in Services as an economy. Now we have certainly gone too far as a country and become London centric as that certainly heavily impacts everywhere outside of the South East. But our Services economy was huge until Brexit of course, as like you say if you are a company and wanting to invest, why would you choose the UK over Ireland when you can access 500m people for the same cost vs 65m. So one of your proposed solutions is to create a complex tax scheme, which will cost millions to set up. That's not going to work. I am not a tax expert, but you've got tons of companies who base themselves in Ireland , Gibraltar, Cayman Islands, Monaco etc. to get around tax. The solution is to close the loopholes.

PSG have the advantage as well though that they can rest and rotate key players in the league. That played a huge advantage in the 2nd leg against Liverpool. Just think PSG are the best team left personally. Suspect they'd dispatch of Arsenal quite comfortably over 2 legs, but a final is anyone's game. Often its the team who just manages the occasion the best. Think Inter could be a great shout if they can hold on. They'd certainly be the team I'd least want to face in a one off game.

Liam, I understand the points you're trying to make but you're wholly inconsistent. For example you early suggested a few pages ago that we're losing companies and not taxing them enough, as well as losing millionaires, but you advocate for people having higher wages and companies paying higher tariffs. There is just an understanding of how free markets and capitalism works. Yes, it is not perfect, but ripping out the entire system over a short period of time means everyone loses out. People have always been nationalist, not sure why you think this a new thing. If you walk round a supermarket why do you think own label produce states 'made in Britain' or certain brands play local heritage & culture. As a country, we made ourselves economically smaller by leaving the EU, cos who wants free access to a customer base of 500m people? Brexit severely hampered our ability to trade and meant other countries within the EU have greater scope for manufacturing without needless bureaucracy that Brexit has created. I guess you've not not noticed the US bond market or that they're odds in favour of a recession though. I appreciate this appears condescending, but amongst this thread there are many people who I can disagree with politically. We all may have different views, but there's a wide range of people who work in industries (myself included) and every single economist who agree that wide spread tariffs are not good for growth. There is a very high risk of stagflation occurring for one.

@Houdini I'm away for the next couple of weeks and have a feeling I may forget or be late with my predictions for the following week so I'm sending them over now! Brentford 2-1 Brighton Crystal Palace 2-1 Bournemouth Everton 0-0 Manchester City West Ham 1-0 Southampton Aston Villa 2-2 Newcastle Fulham 2-2 Chelsea Ipswich 0-2 Arsenal Manchester United 1-1 Wolves Leicester 0-4 Liverpool Tottenham 1-2 Nottingham Forest Manchester City 2-2 Aston Villa Arsenal 1-1 Crystal Palace

PSG the team to beat I think. They swatted Villa away. Not sure Villa can put in the level of performance needed at home. Doue is absolutely ridiculous!

Which begs the question, which country is going to bring all their manufacturing back to the US when the rules change every week never mind every month. Not happening. Who knows what's going on. This will get spun all ways, my view is they did not have a clue and ultimately blinked first.